Group Blog talking about the NBA 2009 Eastern Conference Champions. Due to the amazing success of the 2009 playoff run comments are now frequently deleted to kill offensive comments, incoherence, or asininity. Comments can no longer be anonymous and require either a Blogger or OpenID account.

Monday, March 23, 2009

Magic rally in fourth to beat Knicks

New York was in pretty good shape with a 84-74 lead with under ten minutes remaining in the fourth quarter before the Magic came alive and went on a 19-6 run to take the lead 93-90 with under 4 minutes remaining. The Magic led 100-94 with 39 seconds remaining, and even though the Knicks were able to pull within 100-99, the Magic made their free throws down the stretch for a 106-102 victory.

The game was tied at 24 after one, and the Knicks led 54-50 at the half. The Knicks opened up a 79-70 lead going into the fourth before the Magic outscored the Knicks 36-20 in that final quarter for the four point victory.

-The Knicks outscored the Magic 81-73 from the field-The Magic outscored the Knicks 33-21 from the free throw line-The Magic made 4 of their last 6 three pointers after starting 3 of 19-Turkoglu scored 12 of his 16 points in the fourth quarter, and had 3 assists in the game to lead the Magic-Nate Robinson took 23 shots to score his 19 points, but had 6 assists in the game to lead the Knicks-Other than Johnson, the four other Magic reserves (Redick, Pietrus, Battie, Gortat) combined to score 9 points on 1 of 8 shooting-The Magic made their last seven free throws of the game-The Knicks used an eight-man rotation, with six players scoring in double figures-Rafer Alston shot just 2 of 10 for 9 points for the Magic, but grabbed 7 rebounds and had just 1 turnover in 30 minutes

The Magic still trail Boston by a game for the second seed in the East, as the Celtics beat the Los Angeles Clippers. The Celtics visit the Magic Wednesday for the showdown for second.

2 Comments:

If i hadn't seen this story before i'd be surprised that the magic came back and won. But typical magic,playing with our emotions for three and a 1/2 quarters against a team that plays hard. I'll give the knicks some credit for that but at the same time i hate the magic's ho-hum approach sometime's. Trying to turn it on late will get you beat down this important stretch,had we missed shots late the guys would have simply said there's games left to catch the celtics AND we have to keep shooting because thats how we play. Both are excuses for not playing hard in the first three quarters of the game that wouldve brought you one game away from being able to tie the celts with a win tommorrow. We got the win so thats all i'm going to say about that. Good games from dwight and CL and obviously hedo was huge in the fourth. Gotta be better against BOSTON!

The Magic will have to turn up their game considerably against the Celtics, that's for sure.

Another poor shooting game from Lewis, though he did hit a big three in the fourth; Pietrus has done poorly off the bench the last couple games; we need much more from him; Alston had his worst game in a while offensively, but at least he takes care of the ball and limits his turnovers.

I think Courtney Lee cemented his spot as the starting shooting guard the rest of the way with his performance last night!